We are fortunate to have many talented artists as members. Check here often to see who is in the spotlight. Their work will hang in our reception area just inside the main entrance.

In the spotlight right now is Kenneth Schnall. Ken is one of our keyholders and an active artist- please stop by Frontline Arts for more details. His website can be viewed here.

Previous Artists To Watch

"Spanish Harlem", linocut with hand-coloring on
Combat Paper, 2017

June-Sept, 2017​Walt Nygard is a PCNJ keyholder and active artist in Veterans Paper/Making who often rents the studio to make paper and create relief prints. His poetry readings have been featured in the NY Times and his prints were recently shown at the Nyack Art Walk.​Walt was born in Portland, Oregon and raised on U.S. Army posts of the American West and in Germany. Enthusiastically embracing the generation he was born into, Walt listened to a whole lotta rock'n'roll music and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. A veteran of Vietnam, Okinawa and the Philippines,1969 – 1970, Walt doesn't need to be told how it was way back during the Viet Nam War.Graduation followed, from the University of New Mexico – English/Art. Looking for a job and, as always, for a transformative cultural experience,Walt managed the legendary Albuquerque saloon, Okie's Rathskellar. ​By the early '80s, Walt found himself living in New Jersey, a blue-collar writer and artist, with a wife and two young sons.Walt started a series of veteran's poetry readings at the Puffin Cultural Forum, Teaneck, NJ in 2008. Featured in the New York Times, the series presents prose and non-fiction as well as poetry, spoken word, music and gallery art by veterans young and old.

Since 2011, Walt has been active with Combat Paper NJ. A veteran's art project, Combat Paper studio artists Deconstruct American military uniforms, Reclaim them as paper and Communicate stories through art. Working as a paper and printmaker, Walt is honored to work with younger veterans, assist at workshops and to exhibit his art. Walt's younger son is also an artist. Walt's oldest son, a talented writer, is a veteran of the Afghan and Iraq Wars.

​Artist Statement: In early May, Combat Paper exhibited at El Barrio Artspace in Spanish Harlem. In three trips to the neighborhood, I made time to wander around and enjoy a part of NYC I knew in legend but not from experience. On one street corner, zip-tied to the chain-link fence enclosing a construction site, was a beautiful peace sign. Made of hundreds of crocheted, flower-shaped pieces of every color, someone - and I imagined a group of neighborhood women - hung this bright and wonderful piece of art for all to see.

"Completed Thought," Monotype, 11" x 16," 2016

May-June, 2017Megan Duffy is a PCNJ keyholder who often rents the studio to work on monotypes and also teaches with Roving Press. She has worked at several institutions in New York City as well as Newark, NJ. Check out her website!As a student at Skidmore College, Megan majored in studio art and concentrated in printmaking and textiles. Since graduating in 2015 she has been pursuing art making and art as a career in a variety of ways including as a Roving Press teaching artist and keyholder at PCNJ, an administrator at International Print Center NY, and as an educator at the Tang Teaching Museum and Newark Museum. In the winter of 2016 Megan was chosen as an Art in Ed Resident at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, where she created a new body of work. This new series continued her interest in portraying the body, but moved from the concrete nature of the reductive woodcuts she made for her college thesis work to more painterly, spontaneous monotypes. This print is one of the first she made in a series titled Completed Thought. The organic and irregular lines of the body have always interested her. This piece, and Megan's work in general, focuses in and decontextualizes small sections of the whole to create an image that is referential to the body, but may not reveal itself as something nameable.

Four in a Row, 8 x 10 inches, monotype, 2015

March-April, 2017Katie Weissis a PCNJ member who often rents the studio to work on monotypes. She also exhibits in NYC and is represented by Prince Street Gallery. Check out her website.While working toward an MFA in painting at Queens College, I had a drawing class with Marvin Bileck, a renowned draftsman and printmaker. Shortly after I graduated, he founded a printmaking club for alumni, known as The Bitten Image. The club held studio sessions at the college print shop and ran workshops for many years. A part of Bileck’s vision in forming the club was to introduce painters to printmaking. It was through the club that I was introduced to intaglio and monotype. Monotype is a good fit for a painter. Paintings can take months or even years to complete. The spontaneity, speed and surprise element of monotype is both a challenge and a liberation! It is also an opportunity to work in black and white, which I enjoy. I generally begin with a fully inked plate and form the image by wiping out white and grey areas. Once the image begins to emerge, I also add ink with a brush or roller.This series of monotypes is based on a photos taken in New York City.

"God Drinks Here", color screen print, 19" x 10", 2016

February-March, 2017Mike Stark is a new PCNJ keyholder and will be teaching several of our adult ed workshops. Check out his website. Mike Stark is an American artist who received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016 with a focus in print media. He is currently residing in New Jersey and exploring the long, strange trip known as life through various media, with an emphasis on screen and relief printing. His work focuses on the taboo elements of society many would avoid discussing, while drawing influence from typography, advertisement and traditional signage.